Monday, February 22, 2016

A hearty endorsement of the LEAP Manifesto

There will be millions in Canada
and around the world who, having been nurtured in the spirit of “An
Inconvenient Truth” produced by Al Gore, will next turn to a new movie, as
their catalyst for attitudes, perceptions and actions that can only be
considered natural, if not absolutely necessary. Seizing this moment in history
in which we all face an existential threat from climate change and global
warming, “This Changes Everything,” a movie produced by Avi Lewis, and based on
the book of the same name, written by his partner, Naomi Klein, proposes a
rethinking of the capitalist economic model to bring about dramatic humane and
panoramic change:

·ending
our dependence on fossil fuels,

·ending
our obsessive subsidies to the fossil fuel sector

·building
energy efficient and non-polluting buildings, targeting low income communities
and neighbourhoods first

·respecting
the inherent right of indigenous people through implementation of the UN
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,

·high-speed
rail powered by renewable

·affordable
public transit

·a
local, ecologically-based agriculture

·an
end to all trade deals that obstruct the rebuilding of local economies

·ensuring
immigration status and full protection for all workers

·initiating
financial transaction taxes,

·increasing
resource royalties

·imposing
high income taxes of corporations and the wealthy

·initiating
a progressive carbon tax

·cutting
military spending

This is no modest proposal. It
overturns many of the conventional and deeply ingrained habits, behaviours,
customs, and practices of the last century or more. It proposes a
transformation that amounts not to skipping stones on the mirror surface of a
lake but rather dropping a monumental boulder smack into the middle of the
world’s lakes and oceans. The ripples, very different from the rising waters
that are predicted if we continue to ignore the threat of global warming, will
bring moderation to the climate energies in which we are currently engulfed;
they will also signal a dramatic shift in the attitudes of all majorities to
their minority peoples, shift the basic premises on which human discourse is
based away from a virtual sacralising of the profit and the status motive and
ambition that currently drives much of our transactional culture to a culture
in which equality, compassion, dignity and a much more sustainable ethic
prevails.

In order to bring about such a
shift in global patterns of behaviour and attitude, amounting to nothing short
of another “reformation” in the church, or a Sputnik in space travel, or
another wave like that of the digital age, there will have to be a rethink in
many of the academic departments of many of the world’s universities. History
will include a celebration of the frontiers-folk who were building houses from
recycled tires, and those who were “off-grid” from people known primarily for
their eccentricities, to a respect for their courage and their leadership in
our shared struggle for a decent and sustainable world, as the legacy we wish
to leave for our grandchildren.

Bernie Sanders will not be
permitted to be a mere footnote in the history of humanity. Al Gore will
notbe permitted to be merely a tragic
“wannabe” president of the United States who got a Nobel Peace Prize for his
“Inconvenient Truth”. Bill McKibben will no longer be relegated to the airwaves
of NPR and will spawn disciples in all academic disciplines, as a matter of
ensconcing the new “ethic” in the curriculum of the world’s greatest universities,
and their reduced dependence on the corporate benefactors who pollute planet
with excess carbon. UBC will no longer reject a bid to off-load all investments
in the fossil fuel sector, and they will be joined by a majority of
universities in both developed and developing countries.

The liberal arts will experience a
re-birth. And perhaps it will no longer be a shameful decision for young male
university graduates to enlist as elementary school teachers, even kindergarten
teachers.

There will, however, be both
naysayers and political opposition, perhaps even street demonstrations in
protest to such a “communist” proposal. Substantially raising the taxes of both
the rich (and powerful) and the corporations (also the powerful), both of which
measures will be necessary to accomplish these lofty and worthy goals.
Defanging the fossil fuel industry, along with the fracking industry, will only
generate howls of anguish, grief and perhaps even revenge. Giving aboriginal
and indigenous communities a real voice in their lives, and in those issues
that impact their lives, as local, provincial and national tables, on their own
merit, (and not as representatives of the Liberal Party of Canada, or any other
national political party) will generate hostility and resentment, extending
beyond the level of anger when national rail lines are blocked by aboriginal
people, in a vain attempt to get their voices acknowledged (never mind actually
heard). Cutting military spending, especially by those amounts required to make
this vision feasible, will undercut those whose lives, careers and reputations
are embedded in the military establishment. And cutting military spending will
also require, whether openly stated or not, a significant change in the
direction of our foreign policy, away from guns, bombs, missiles and fighter
jets and towards negotiations, agreements, treaties and contracts even with
those who consider us their enemy. All political leaders who depend on the
“macho” applications of hard power (and that includes nearly every current
world leader, with a possible nod to Obama who has determinedly tried to avoid
military action whenever possible) and the generals, admirals and sargeants who
advise them will have to generate different options for resolving disputes between
and among nations.

Military colleges will be expected
to develop curriculum that focuses on the strategies, tactics, the theories and
philosophies that attend peacekeeping. Corporations too will have to chift
their focus from a narcissistic pursuit of the greatest profit for the smallest
number of executives, at the expense of service and product deficits and
consumer trust, to a perspective that respects their workers and their
consumers ahead of their pursuit of profits, ironically thereby generating enhanced
profits, through better business practices. Since everyone will be elegible for
a guaranteed annual income (a social policy profoundly and eagerly supported
elsewhere in this space), the notion of government hand-outs will be eliminated
as will the reduction of social stigma on those who choose to work less than
the currently required excessive number of hours to impress their bosses and
their neighbours, but not their doctors (who hardly ever caution patients
working too hard or too long, given their own ridiculous and self-sabotaging
schedules, introduced as a matter of the rigeur of the medical profession, way
back in medical school).

In a culture that elevates the
reasonable expectation that we are each “our brother’s keeper” (while keeping
an eye on the potential for abuses by those who seek a free ride) our culture
will elevate the aspirations and the imaginations, not to mention the
contributions of generations of young people, whose pride and respect for their
homeland will inevitably rise.

In Canada, the level of militarism
remains considerably lower than it is in the United States, while the
penetration of vegetarianism is significantly higher. Nevertheless, if this
revolution is to have real roots in Canada, it would be preferable for it to be
linked intimately to a similar movement in the United States where militarism
including arms manufacturing dominates the culture and the national mind-set,
verging tragically on being its own ‘religion.’ Vegetarianism, too, would
support the reduction of the pollution contributed by animal farming. It is not
an incidental observation to note that in Canada, just announced today, a mere
44% of Canadians believe that humans are the main cause of global warming and
climate change. Whatever the comparable figure is in the United States, both
populations will have be more rigorously educated on the science that supports
the conclusion that human contributions have to be reduced, if not completely
eliminated, if we are to reach legitimate and reasonable emission controls.

Let’s be clear, we are drowning in
our own effluent; we are suffocating in our own poisoned atmosphere; we are
atrophying in our own hope for a reasonable change in the direction we are
heading; we are all complicit in the over-consumption of needless and
contaminating products, given the status and reputation we attach to their
acquisition; and we are all political actors (whether we choose to participate
or not) and only through our conscious political choices, conversations and
activism will such a vision as that proposed by LEAP come to reality.

This is just one more voice,
perhaps crying the wilderness, encouraging each person reading these digits to
reflect on our own lives, on the premises that guide our lives, on the
colleagues who influence our lives, and contemplate taking the “radical” step
of attending a showing of the movie, “This Changes Everything”....being shown
in Canada on dates available on their website, of signing a commitment to
support LEAP, and then of engaging with those in our circles in conversations
that put these ideas on the table.

Consider this modest piece a
sincere endorsement of what I consider modest proposals in LEAP, and an
invitation to join with others in your community to move the conversation in
the direction of these goals.